The City of Syracuse was recently cited as one of the top 10 poorest cities in the country by the US Census Bureau. The Census Bureau puts out a yearly survey of a sample of the population called the American Community Survey. They also put out a compiled American Community Survey that combines ACS data from the previous 5 years. The 1 year survey has information from fewer people so it doesn’t get as granular as the 5 year survey, which often allows an analysis down to a census tract or census block group levels rather than only at a city-wide level.
We can look at a history of poverty since the Census makes all of this data public. Here we can see that the City of Syracuse’s poverty rate has fluctuated and has generally dropped, but remains in the mid-30s.
We can also compare against other cities to benchmark. Here we can see that Syracuse has one of the highest poverty rates in the state.
We can also look at specific measures, like how many people take public transportation - or even more detailed - how many people in poverty take public transportation.
And again we can compare by city
## [1] "Census_Tracts_in_Syracuse_NY_2010.shp"
## [2] "City_Streets_2011.shp"
## OGR data source with driver: ESRI Shapefile
## Source: "/Users/samedelstein/city_of_syracuse_poverty", layer: "Census_Tracts_in_Syracuse_NY_2010"
## with 55 features
## It has 14 fields
## Integer64 fields read as strings: FID ALAND10 AWATER10
## Regions defined for each Polygons
## OGR data source with driver: ESRI Shapefile
## Source: "/Users/samedelstein/city_of_syracuse_poverty", layer: "City_Streets_2011"
## with 5650 features
## It has 50 fields
## Integer64 fields read as strings: OBJECTID FNODE_ TNODE_ LPOLY_ RPOLY_ CITYST_ CITYST_ID FNODE_1 TNODE_1 LPOLY_1 RPOLY_1 CITYST2_ CITYST2_ID LTYPE GDT_ID2 GDT_ RECNUM L_F_ADD L_T_ADD R_F_ADD R_T_ADD L_F_IADD L_T_IADD R_F_IADD R_T_IADD PAVE2 ST_FLAG LINECODE CITYST_I_1